This well-filled and
fascinating disc covers the songs of
five of the great Berlin Weimar cabaret
composers. All of course had to leave
Germany on Hitler’s accession. In some
of the cabaret works there was a kind
of collective collaboration, with composers
– and importantly their poets – joining
forces. Some clearly had satiric intent
– and these are the ones that are generally
remembered - but others were far less
politicised and served a more localised
sphere of reference. Alongside the grand
spectacles in the big Berlin theatres
the cabarets flourished in their wake
offering spectacle, flesh and music,
which was itself a compound of poetry
and frequently political satire.

Apart from the five
composers we have the galaxy of the
singing stars who prowled the basements
and cabarets and theatres. Dietrich,
of course, is here, first up in Spoliansky,
with a vocal ensemble accompanied by
a Jazz-Revue band boasting a soprano
sax soloist, parlando feline vocals
and tongue-twisting duets. Many of the
accompaniments feature the modish dance
bands of the day with an admixture of
hot lick trumpeters piling on the gas
in ride-out choruses. Some of the bands
are hopeless – the rinky-dink Weintraubs
Syncopators fail to live up to their
name quite spectacularly – and in the
main the models are Red Nichols and
Bix Beiderbecke, as was the fashion
across Europe at the time. There’s a
splendid example of this in Marek Weber’s
famous band where pretty good reproductions
of Bix, Frankie Trumbauer, trombonist
Bill Rank and Adrian Rollini are smartly
paraded.

Of the singers we go
from one extreme, the single example
of Lotte Lehmann in Benatzky’s Ich
muss wieder einmal in Grinzing sein
to the adenoidal insinuation of
the superby sinister Max Hansen. Dietrich
is demure, in her early style, in Nelson’s
Peter, Peter whilst Kurt Gerron
lives up to his reputation as a Weill
singer in HerrDoktor,
a rather less strident Nelson setting.
Hilde Hildebrand cultivates her own
special brand of sprachgesang whilst
Kate Kühl’s slightly earlier recording
of Heymann’s Die Dorfschöne
shows more the operetta influence
on cabaret chansons. Lilian Harvey is
girlish-sounding in her Heymann song,
with very romantic band backing that
does manage to swing out at the end,
and in the earliest of these recordings,
the 1926 Hollaender song Oh Mond
we can hear Blandine Ebinger’s yearning
ingénue voice in its pristine
youth. By contrast the diablerie of
Claire Waldoff is more than apparent
in Hollaender’s Raus mit den Männern
aus dem Reichstag. She certainly
evokes a leathered palm on the thigh
and her Gatling gun roar is enough to
shake the very cabaret foundations.
After this female Samson we encounter
the avuncular roar of Paul Graetz and
some seductive Dietrich at last, in
Hollaender’s famous Jonny.

The copies used are
in generally good condition though Morphium,
Ach, Luise and Heymann’s Liebling
are in rather rough shape. Notes
are appositely sharp and the booklet
is nicely laid out and designed. There
is a fine panoramic sweep to this cabaret
salute.

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